Russia's Foreign Policy Towards North Africa in the Wake of the Arab Spring

Abstract

Since coming to power in 2000, Russian president Vladimir Putin has tried to construct a narrative of regaining Russia's status as a major global power. However, in practice the Kremlin is yet to have created a coherent strategy or to have achieved a sense of coordination in foreign policy. While North Africa has not been at the forefront of this narrative, recently Moscow has intensified its diplomatic links and cooperation with the regimes in the region. The Arab Spring presented Russian policy-makers with a series of challenges regarding the uncertainty of the developments in the region, but also with renewed economic opportunities. This profile analyses Moscow's relationships with the countries in North Africa (Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria) in the wake of the Arab Spring. In each case the Kremlin aimed to take advantage of the new opportunities without really being guided by an overarching strategy for the region. However, Russia increasingly seems to be keen to position itself in the region as an alternative to EU or the US, not least in light of the crisis in Ukraine.

Uncertainty at the EU's borders: narratives of EU external relations in the revised European Neighbourhood Policy towards the southern borderlands

“…In countries such as Egypt, Algeria, Libya, and Lebanon, for example, the EU is viewed with distrust fuelled by notions that EU border management policies are simply destined to feed neo-colonial aspirations. This impediment to playing a more visible role in the southern borderlands, and contradictory, uneven and often detrimental border management practices, in conjunction with the emergence of other actors, such as Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Russia and China -all of which aim at involving the EU's southern neighbours into unconditional and potentially competitive governance regimes (Schumacher and Fernández Molina 2013, Schumacher and Nitoiu 2015, Sun and Zoubir 2014 -demand an acute re-orientation and reconstitution of EU narratives. This would mean that the shift from focusing on external effectiveness to selfpresentation and identity that, according to Bickerton (2011), occurred in EUFP in recent years, needs to be addressed and reversed.…”

The Impact of Russian Presence in Africa

“…Russia, on the other hand, offered to export wheat that until the outbreak of the 2014 war in Ukraine was supplied in considerable amounts by Kyiv. Since the outbreak of the war, Morocco was considered also a ‗strategic partner' (Schumacher & Nitoiu, 2015).…”

Regional foreign policy dynamics and their implications for the Mediterranean Region

“…The intervention was also a statement of Russia's desire to remain a great power, a long-standing objective of Russian foreign policy. As long as the Russian domestic situation does not experience a major negative shock, Russia can be expected to continue to seek a regional role, at least in Syria, and likely elsewhere along the Med (Magen, 2015;Margelov, 2013;Schumacher & Nitoiu, 2015).…”